


Therapy

by xathira



Series: Prince of the Unknown [21]
Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Beast Wirt, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Healing, Other, Prince!Wirt AU, Wounds, people get undressed but it's not what you think
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:48:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26989291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xathira/pseuds/xathira
Summary: Now that Wirt has told the truth, he and Beatrice take some much needed time to heal.They are safe.  Everything is okay.  They're fine.
Series: Prince of the Unknown [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1516961
Comments: 75
Kudos: 151





	1. breakfast

**Author's Note:**

> Whiggity wrote a [deliciously dark companion piece](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26981089) to this chapter, giving insight to Beatrice's mentioned nightmare. While it is not necessary to read "Oneros" in order to understand this installment of POTU, I recommend it anyway to better appreciate just how twisted and complex Bea and Wirt's relationship currently is. Whiggity captured it perfectly in a way that I won't be exploring in this otherwise not-sexy series.
> 
> If you're new to this series - welcome! Happy to have you here. You should start at Part 1 to know what the heck is going on. See you when you catch up ;)

The storm quiets the barn’s atmosphere like a heavy blanket laid over the roof. Wirt falls asleep long before Beatrice, his bruised eyelids unwillingly dropping shut to leave Beatrice by herself in the Dark Lantern’s whiskey-hued halo. She senses that flame behind her like a third person. Watching. Accusing. _Hungry._

Her muscles are spring-loaded, primed to act when The Beast sheds his helpless facade and steals back his soul and abandons Beatrice here in Appleonia to burn… except she knows that Wirt’s weariness isn’t a facade, the _evilness_ was… but he’d labored through such needlessly complicated machinations to trick her before… but that was all a _lie..._

Rationally, Beatrice accepts that Wirt told her the truth. They’re on the same page now, ready to continue a story where Greg is back home alive and Wirt is still mostly himself and she is the new Lantern-Bearer, or whatever. They’re _fine._ Wirt has genuinely sacked out in the hay with the perfect stillness of a corpse, looking fragile as a twig, and does not respond to her tentatively saying his name into the dark because he _doesn’t hear her_ —not because he’s biding his time to betray her once more. Beatrice settles back into her post, or tries to, and stubbornly closes eyes that sting from the salt of tears and a drowning exhaustion.

She believes him. She does. So why is it so hard for Beatrice to _relax_ after he explained everything he could? How come she keeps jolting awake at _nothing_ while Wirt is clearly too spent to do more than snore? The survivor in Beatrice screams that she erect her guard and never falter, yet the danger has passed—the danger was an _act_ —and there is no reason for her to turn around and stare at The Beast as he slumps in the straw. It is childish to scoot closer, testing how deeply he dreams by daring to run her finger along a medial tine of his antler. She is safe in this barn, in Appleonia. Wirt won’t hurt her anymore.

Unfortunately, Beatrice cannot simply turn her vigilance _off._

“Where do we go from here?” she whispers to the part in his hair where antler fuses with skull. Beatrice can’t hate him anymore… she can’t forgive him right now, either. The venom collected in her has nowhere to go, so it continues to simmer in her stomach—anger, guilt, anxiety and affection keeping her pulse thudding fast despite the hypnotizing rain and the way Wirt’s head tilts toward her touch as he dreams. 

_Damn idiot Beast._ A surge of rebellion ignites south of her jaw. Her mind cannot make itself up on whether to capitulate or lash out, to run or repose, so Beatrice executes a definitive order and shuffles on her belly from her half of the stall to Wirt’s. She aligns herself parallel to him, their shoulders and hips almost evenly matched. Her right hand creeps over the hay to brazenly cup the back of his neck, where the thickness of his overgrown hair brushes his first monstrous dorsal prominence, set like a black opal in his skin. 

The Beast does not snarl at her touch. He does not flinch to attention, demanding space or an explanation or for her to fear him, hate him, abandon him. Beatrice wonders if the reason her blood thumps hot and rapid-fire in her breast is because she is _waiting_ for Wirt to react… or because she _wants_ him to. 

Wirt whines at a secret terror, eyes rolling fretfully under his lids. It is habit for Beatrice to grudgingly stroke his forelock to soothe him like she’d soothe Rusty at the mill during a thunderstorm… she doesn’t think too much about the monotonous action, given the ruthless pangs of her inner tug-of-war. Her awareness shutters. Imperceptibly, the troubled gaps that span sleep and tossing fitfully in the hay expand until Beatrice is submerged in nothingness… 

… And then suffers a nightmare that has her panting and digging her fingernails into Wirt’s back.

Her wild panic disturbs them both, and it takes the sleep-garbled condolences of a bewildered, dubiously conscious Beast to reign in the gallop of Beatrice’s heartbeat, the breathless sting of her shame, to ground her again beneath the cobwebbed rafters and the rain. Beatrice rocks onto her spine to separate herself from the divot in the straw she’d occupied and presses a fist down on her lurching sternum. Wirt’s delirious attempts at comfort are ice on a burn. Are frostbite. She needs him to shut up and stop trying to soothe her, she doesn’t need it, she isn’t _worth_ it.

"A bad dream," she repeats stubbornly, avoiding his half-seeing stare and his third sigh of _Beatrice?_

Did she really think they’d be better after Wirt told the truth? After she called him out and dragged up every gritty detail of his plot, of what he’d been through alone while she called him awful, awful things? No _shit_ Beatrice isn’t back to normal—she’s tangled in her own knots, ugliness twisted all the way through. Mistrust, failure, weakness, fury-stained devotion—

Wirt blinks thin blue slivers at her, already succumbing to the dream Beatrice had so thoughtlessly interrupted. “Y’sure… you’re okay?” he slurs faintly, running out of solace to share.

“Yeah. Go back to bed,” she commands him. He promptly starts to drift. Scorn for _herself_ chases her treacherous nerves as they traverse her skin. The tumultuous cocktail in her blood _boils._

Her sole comfort is that Wirt probably will not remember a word of what he mumbled to her in the morning, or that Beatrice has suffered a nightmare at all. Beatrice hopes he doesn’t remember. She really, really hopes.

They’ve each of them had enough nightmares to last a lifetime.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Dawn takes its sweet time to greet the barn. The weather brushes away rain clouds and replaces them with grey-blue cotton that blurs lilac where early sunshine paints its round-soft edges. Birdsong trills distantly from the orchard’s hill and spills down toward the barn like bells dropped from a bucket. 

Beatrice yawns into the smell of water-quenched dirt and fluffy hay. Not surprisingly, she feels as if her brothers took turns pummeling her in the face and stomach. Everything is sore. Nausea twinges below her navel. She would _love_ to bury herself in more blankets and snooze for another hour, or twenty-four; however, a minor complication has presented itself which makes further sleep impossible. 

Wirt is curled up against her back on his stomach like a slumbering puppy, leaving hardly any gaps of space between them—greedy for every precious square-inch of human warmth he can borrow. His body follows the loose S-shape of Beatrice’s frame; his arms are crossed tight under his chest, either to stop himself from holding her or to conserve the meager heat they share; his face—turned as much as his antlers will allow—burrows into the unbound curls that tumble down Beatrice’s shoulders and over the hay as if her hair is a copper-spun pillow. When he inhales, his lungs make a sound like the last brittle leaf on an autumn branch. And when he _exhales…_

Beatrice must hold her own breath to better interpret the rumble that massages her spine. It dips low, rhythmic, something she _feels_ better than she _hears._ This isn’t the same vague fluid-in-chest gurgle she’d noticed last night, which she worries is a sign of sickness or injury or both. No… Beatrice keeps herself still, listening, bracing for the next gentle roll.

Understanding prompts a rush of giddiness that prickles from her scalp to her toes. 

The Beast is _purring._

As soon as she thinks it—purring!—Wirt unconsciously adjusts himself to fit her contours better and motors a contented purr into the nape of her neck. Goosebumps rise on Beatrice’s skin like tiny champagne bubbles. A snort of laughter pushes insistently at her soft palate. She covers her mouth with one hand and chews the inside of her cheeks. If Wirt could appreciate how disgusting she was, he’d surely be repulsed by this proximity. This isn’t funny. She cannot laugh, she’ll wake him up, _for the love of God don’t wake him up—_

Another purr, this one lilting up at the end like a question, like a cat responding to his name. The innocence of it is _comical_ paired next to the wickedness Beatrice dreamt hours ago. She unintentionally sputters into her palm. Wirt stirs, ending that lovely sound with creaky grunt. 

In the spare seconds of The Beast resurfacing to consciousness, Beatrice slowly rolls away from him—wincing as she pulls the hair caught under his cheek free, hoping to deny that they’d been as close as two hands in prayer. She convincingly pretends to be asleep by hiding her head under her blanket: a trick all the youngest bluebirds know.

Wirt rustles in his bed; Beatrice hears his claws feeling out the warm spot next to him where her body had been, the dry rasp of his ligneous knuckles rubbing his eyes. “B… Beatrice? How’d you… how’d you sleep?”

Air fills her lungs, intended to mimic a peaceful sigh, only Wirt utters an unfairly adorable _brr_ as he stretches and that sigh leaves Beatrice as a squawk. She retreats further into her blanket and tries to muffle herself in the quilted fabric. It’s no use. Uncontrollable silent laughter quakes through her and there is nothing Beatrice can do.

One of Wirt’s talons squeezes her shuddering shoulder. His voice sloughs off the roughness of waking up with each note of concern. “H-Hey, Beatrice? It’s okay… I didn’t go anywhere, see? We’re in Appleonia. We’re safe. Y-You can… you can go get some breakfast, and maybe write a letter to your family… I’m sorry. I p-put you through a lot, of course you’re still upset, I’m sorry…”

Beatrice gasps in oxygen. The next spasm of her diaphragm hits the barn as a cackling peal, and Wirt goes quiet.

“Are you _laughing?”_ he asks, tone cracking in disbelief.

“No—” Beatrice coughs, unable to defend herself past hysterical giggles, and has to conceal her face in the crook of her arm when Wirt tugs back her blanket. 

“You _are,_ laughing,” he mutters. His disappointment and discomfort sound so like _him,_ like the shamefaced Wirt that Beatrice grew to love, that her laughter abruptly stalls at the base of her tongue and she hiccups out a sob. The pale blue light that had been washing over her sours into lemon. “Wait… crying? Beatrice, what’s wrong? Please tell me… please tell me what to do!”

She wipes her running nose on her sleeve, trembling, crying as helplessly as she’d been laughing. Wirt’s right—they _are_ safe and she _is_ still upset and Beatrice has no idea how to nullify the noxious emotional mix within her so it purges itself through childish tears and an inordinate amount of mucus. _Breathe and suck it up,_ she orders herself fiercely through a runaway wail. Her teeth clench to stifle the sound but then she’s just wailing through clenched teeth. _Stop it, it’s fine, we’re fine, we’re FINE!_

Wirt hands her his filthy, discarded shirt to blow her nose into. Beatrice obliges, and when she’s done she tosses the sodden mess at the back of the stall with such force that Wirt spooks at the impact. 

“What?” she snaps tearfully at his troubled expression. It’s difficult to exude ferociousness with puffy eyelids, but Wirt’s head retreats contritely toward his clavicles so it _must_ have worked. Beatrice sniffs mightily and shoves herself into a sitting position so she can glare eye-level at her… friend? Ex-friend? Beastly responsibility? The boy that her fate is interlocked with, for better or worse?

“Are you alright?” Wirt murmurs after a tense eight seconds. His forehead wrinkles immediately and he turns from Beatrice as if bracing to be struck. “No, obviously you’re not… I meant..."

“Do you _expect_ me to be alright?” Beatrice hugs her knees tight, holding herself or holding herself back. Resentment and relief pace back and forth in her guts. _Restless._ Her annoyed huff quavers out her chest. “I’m kinda t-trying to recover from learning you’re _not_ a murderous bastard. Gimme a minute.”

In the dimness of the barn, Wirt blushes. “I’m worried about you,” he admits softly. Beatrice is both touched and insulted and she deals with this grinding clash by ripping her blanket off her lap and lobbing it at Wirt’s stupid face.

“What’re you worried about?” she returns somewhat hoarsely. While Wirt can’t witness it, she scours tears off her cheekbones with the heel of her palm—as if the pointless effort will erase the evidence of her miniature morning breakdown or her midnight disgrace. 

He whimpers behind his quilted curtain, struggling. “What am I…? _Everything._ I’m worried about everything. I thought that… th-that you’d… I can’t—” 

When it’s clear that the weakened Beast can’t untangle the fabric from his antlers without help, Beatrice grumbles and frees him. The earnestness of his mien is so familiar and so _opposite_ of the monstrous mask he’d constructed that the lump in Beatrice’s vocal cords threatens to swell. It plucks at her heartstrings how much she missed that stupid stuttering, this bleeding heart-on-sleeve sincerity—and mistrust hounds close behind nostalgia, fangs cutting her to the quick before Beatrice has the chance to sort them out. 

Wirt gestures vaguely and casts murky shadow-puppets along the stall’s door where his hands pass in front of the lantern’s beam. “Why were you laughing… crying…? What was with...”

“My polar opposite hysterias?” Beatrice offers dryly. At his intent, pleading nod, she casually shrugs her shoulders. “Hmm. You purr in your sleep.”

Wirt could not be more astonished if he woke up dangling upside down from the ceiling. His eyes flare purely pink and his spine straightens indignantly. “I do not.”

“Oh, but you _do,”_ Beatrice tells him gleefully. Here is an opportunity to avoid sharing her chaotic appalling whiplashed feelings and by God is she taking it. “Like a fat tomcat. Funniest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I do not purr! And—and that doesn’t explain why you were crying, so—”

“Ugh, can we drop it? I’m freaking tired, Wirt. People fall apart when they’re tired. Let’s talk about since when you started purring...”

“You’re more than tired. I knew you should have stayed at the inn, you probably need to see a doctor—”

“Hold on, you don’t get to decide what’s best for me! _I_ get to decide what’s best for me! Sure, I’m loopy and I need more rest, we both do, it’s fine—”

“It’s _not_ fine!”

Wirt’s shout scares them both. Beatrice’s jaw claps shut and Wirt reflexively lifts the blanket to his chin as a shield. Their eyes are connected by an electric wire. 

Wirt blinks first, a lonesome drop of smoke-laced moisture drawing a wet line down the side of his nose. “It’s not fine,” he repeats in words small enough to fit in a jewelry box, in the palm of Beatrice’s hand. “You’ve been through hell. _I put you through hell._ So you’re… you’re allowed to cry, and to _disdain_ me, because honestly? I want to cry, and I d-disdain me, too.”

The pressure in Beatrice’s throat grows and throbs persistently behind her eye sockets. He’s the worst. _She’s_ the worst. “You dumb sad poet,” she rasps eventually, wanting to throttle him, wanting to hug him, and settling for reaching out to firmly grab Wirt’s claws as they bunch around the blanket. 

He drops the fabric and reciprocates her grip, lacing their mismatched digits together as if to reassure himself that Beatrice is _real_ and not a hallucination seconds away from fading. “I missed you,” he whispers ardently. 

That does it for Beatrice. She chokes out an angry expletive, cursing The Beast for getting to her, furious with herself for being such a pathetic sap, and tries to crush his knuckles with the strength of her fist. “I missed you too. God _damn_ it. Don’t you ever—ever!—do this shit to me again, g-got me? Or I’ll kill you.”

“P-Promise?” Wirt blubbers. And all at once Beatrice is crying so hard she can’t articulate herself and she has to yank this horrible self-defeating moron into the most careful, most awkward one-armed hug either of them can manage. 

They're like that—clinging close, bawling like babies—when the barn door rolls open to reveal a portrait of the dew-washed orchard and a cheerfully awake Holly Hotchkiss carrying a picnic basket.

“Good morning! I brought breakfast but then heard crying, so I came in straight away and I… oh. Oh. _Oh.”_

Holly’s terminal _ohs_ represented her registering that Beatrice and The Wanderer were embracing, that The Wanderer was _shirtless,_ and that The Wanderer was mortally injured—all in that order. If natural horses could blush, Beatrice supposes that they would resemble Holly: ears totally erect and nostrils flared to their fullest extent. 

The Appleonian lass smiles timidly. One of her boots slides subtly backward toward the barn entrance. “I can… come back later?”

“We’re fine,” Beatrice sniffles gruffly, coaching her features into blank stoniness. Beside her, Wirt shakes his head mournfully and snuffles _“we’re not,”_ which triggers a fresh round of ironic and inappropriate chortling on Beatrice’s part. 

Holly holds up her basket as though she doesn't know what to do with it. One would think she'd walked in on an unspeakably intimate scene. "Would you like me to, um, leave this over here?"

Beatrice surprises herself by shaking her head. "Nah. Bring it on over."

Wirt remembers that he is half-clothed and hurriedly shrugs his blanket around himself, clearly more uptight about modesty than about obscuring his wounds. His ears and eyes are the color of cherry blossoms. At the last moment—when Holly hesitates meekly at their stall, shifting her basket hand to hand and gaze avoiding contact with the Dark Lantern—he squeaks a mortified gasp and drapes himself in opaque shadow, too.

"She's seen what you look like, dork," Beatrice scolds him without heat. "Maybe be honest with her, too."

Hesitation, fearful and squirming. The Beast truly hadn't caught his slip last night, when Holly had attempted to play mediator for their brutal exchange and he'd dropped his darkness on accident; he's probably petrified of disappointing his biggest supporter in Appleonia with the reality of his butchered humanity. It takes Beatrice dropping her hand on his knee in reassurance to sway him into ending _this_ needless performance as well.

Wirt huddles in his quilt and shyly casts his cloak away… back to being a boy with a bird's nest of bedhead in the middle of his branch-antlers. A warm grin eases the prudence from Holly's face. "There you are, Wanderer," she nickers. "I like this version of you much better."

Beatrice accepts the picnic basket from Holly while a flustered Wirt is engrossed with cocooning himself. She flips the lid and is neither disappointed nor surprised to find at least a _dozen_ fresh-baked apple turnovers tucked inside, along with plates and cutlery for two. The aroma of melted butter, ground cinnamon, brown sugar, and of course tart Granny Smith apple have her stomach snarling and her mouth salivating like a starved dog at the dinner table. Nothing should smell so good that Beatrice can _taste it_ without taking a bite. Mistiness unrelated to her complicated relationship with The Beast or her terrible fatigue glimmers in her eyes. 

"Holly," she states emphatically, "you are the best person I've ever met."

“They’re extras,” Holly demures, twirling a stray piece of her mane between her fingers. “We always make breakfast for the Golden Delicious guests… those would be wasted otherwise.”

A discerning smirk kinks up one side of Beatrice’s mouth. _Please._ As if the filly hadn’t risen extra early to either bake the turnovers herself or squirrel them away before they could be missed.

Wirt stifles a delighted thrum in his throat after Beatrice peers at him meaningfully and Holly tilts her ears at him in interest. He attacks the pastry Beatrice proffers more aggressively than necessary without waiting for a plate—or a fork—and utilizes his talons to spear the crust, oblivious to the apple pulp that glistens down the back of his hand. Beatrice also forgoes the use of dining ware; her response to breakfast is no less feral than Wirt’s, and she inhales her food like a python horking down its prey whole. Flawlessly flaky crust and gooey spiced filling are gone in a snap of teeth. 

Holly magnanimously dons an unbothered facade. “You… you like them?”

They answer her with animalistic moans of bliss.

“Er—wonderful! I hope those will be enough for you. I’ll be back later to pick up the basket…” Holly trails off at the obdurate tug of Beatrice’s fingers on the hem of her skirt. “Do you need something? Jam, perhaps? There’s a flask of milk in there, I forgot to mention—”

“Sit,” Beatrice says. Not asking.

“Please,” Wirt adds gently. 

Their combined influence—puppy-dog eyes from Wirt and militant expectation from Beatrice—persuade Holly to kneel with them. Beatrice piles Holly's plate with three turnovers and a fork that she and Wirt do not need, and all three of them immerse themselves in the serious business of eating. 

Halfway through chewing, Wirt and Beatrice happen to make eye contact. A silent reassurance passes along the bridge of their connection, each of them soaking in the other’s presence, stunned for an instant that they are alive and together and doing something as mundane and innocuously pleasant as having breakfast after… well. All of it. 

Wirt holds a turnover in one claw and pinches his cozy blanket-shawl closed with the other, hiding his coal-black scabs from view but not the golden crumbs on his chin; Beatrice’s hair spirals like rust shavings in every direction, decorated with hay, and the circles under her eyes are the same charcoal-blue as the shadow that the barn casts on the grass outside; they make shallow nests in the straw where they sit with Holly, and when they reach for their third turnovers the sunlight roosting in their stall gradually outshines the Dark Lantern’s sullen flicker. They might all be great friends sharing a picnic, simply for the joy of it, and for this brief morning juncture the unfairnesses and unkindnesses that splintered them feel as fleeting as the nightmares that haunted their sleep.

And if the two of them happen to start weeping again, stuffing more honeyed apple-filling in their mouths to muffle the sound, Holly wisely nibbles her food and says nothing.


	2. waking

They devour every single apple turnover in the basket. When Wirt and Beatrice finish their meal, having polished off the flask of fresh milk and licked the crumbs and syrup from their hands, they prop themselves against the edge of the stall side by side and blink drowsily at Holly seated primly across from them.

“I need that recipe,” Beatrice declares, closing her eyes to savor the buttered apple flavor on her tongue. “It will blow my mom’s socks off.”

“They were perfect,” Wirt agrees. His voice keeps wanting to rev into the timbre that is _definitely not purring_ and he has to clear his throat to keep the trill from his syllables. “Thank you, Holly. Very, very much.”

Beatrice hums _“mmm-hmm...”_ and nonchalantly drops her head to rest on Wirt’s uninjured shoulder. The Beast stills like a prey animal. Beatrice had done this on occasion at the mill after Wirt returned home late from his Beastly tasks; it was a rare phenomenon—a shooting star in their relationship. The two of them would rest outside while listening to the evening churn of the waterwheel, alone except for the spring peepers and the stars, and Wirt would keep his mouth shut lest he annoy his friend with mawkish lines of poetry… or observations of the sleek obsidian of the river… or perhaps an unwelcome comment about how much he cherished having her by his side. Words ruined such moments. They were meant to be savored silently. To be basked in like a moonbeam... 

He’s quiet now, filled with the swelling terror that accompanies something too good to be true. Nightmares and heartache are scant _hours_ behind them. The rising sun shines through the barn entrance and illuminates spots on the dirt floor that are splotched dark from Wirt’s blood. He should be alone… and yet, Beatrice is cuddled next to him. Holly is over there preening adorably from the praise of her baking. They’re all together. A wary, experimental breath lifts Wirt’s battered ribs and the shoulder which Beatrice has claimed; she simply shifts her cheek for comfort.

Holly’s polite smile curves sly and knowing. “Did you two sleep well?” she asks innocuously, and Wirt begins to sweat under his blanket. 

“I guess,” Beatrice answers around a wide yawn. “I wouldn’t mind lying in bed for a week, to be honest… but we need to figure out what we’re doing next, now that I don’t have to murder this idiot anymore.” Wirt protests softly; she ignores him. “Apparently, Mr. Wanderer has a stalker problem. We need to fuel the Lantern, since we skimped last night. Everyone in town thinks I’m insane. Oh—and my family probably thinks I’m dead.”

She adds this latter bit curtly, half-kidding; Holly murmurs “stalker problem?” in a troubled tone; Wirt moans in distress, embarrassment blotted out, and hits one of his antlers upon the stall as he cranes his neck to address the girl using him as a pillow. “Bea, your family… you have to go home as soon as possible, or they have to come _here—_ ”

“Down boy,” Beatrice orders, stern. “Holly, can you show me the post office today? I’ll send Mom and Dad a letter to let them know I’m alive. _Happy,_ Worry-Wirt?”

He inhales to complain or to chastise Beatrice for being blasé or to burst into guilty tears—and the redhead preemptively cuts him off with a discreet yet no-nonsense elbow in his side. Her head hasn’t left his shoulder. Holly has to wipe imaginary crumbs from her lips to hide her grin.

“I can surely bring you by the post office today, Beatrice. It would be my pleasure.” The Appleonian lass packs up her plate, fork, and the empty milk-flask, and brushes twigs of straw from her skirt as she stands to leave. Her gaze skips back and forth from a drowsy Beatrice to a subdued, deeply blushing Wirt. “How about I return in an hour or so? Let you two… get reacquainted?”

Wirt’s irises bloom lavender-rose. Beatrice doesn’t seem to register Holly’s insinuation; a truly magnificent groan drags past her teeth as she stretches—cracks her back, pops her joints—and pushes off the wooden planks behind her to stumble upright. “Let’s just get this day started. Otherwise I won’t be able to move.” 

Holly muffles a snort of laughter that makes Wirt burrow into his quilt and Beatrice cock her head quizzically. “Ah—Are you joinin’ us in town, Wanderer?” the filly rushes to ask. She all but sparkles at the idea. “Everyone would love to meet you in person at last… you and Beatrice can get patched up by the doctor, we can find you some new clothes, _oooo—_ I’ll introduce you to my family!”

“Didn’t you mention your ‘bargain’ involved keeping The Wanderer anonymous?” Beatrice interrupts, puzzled. Her cheeks color when she remembers how she’d attempted to wreck that anonymity yesterday by alarming nearly all of Appleonia, and she glances at Wirt for clarification. “Is that how it works? They’re not supposed to look for you, orchard has apples year-round, yadda yadda?”

Holly appears totally impressed that Beatrice remembered the story she shared about her town’s savior; Wirt appears wan and uncomfortable. 

“I… I’m n-not actually one-hundred percent certain…”

“We wouldn’t be seeking you out, you’d be _visiting!”_ Holly cries, increasingly excited. “It’ll be fine if he visits town for just a little while, right? Just for one day? Maybe for lunch? And dinner too? Nobody will think Beatrice is nuts if the Wanderer vouches for her in person!”

The Appleoninan is bouncing in place, words tumbling faster and faster. Wirt pales and pulls his blanket up to his ears until only his antlers and the cowlick on his crown are visible. He really _doesn’t_ understand his influence on this place… he has genuine affection for Appleonia, for Holly, and he’s ashamed to admit that the charmed plenty this town enjoys may have rules that he has no control over. _Would_ it be safe for him to trot out in public? 

Wirt definitely doesn’t _want_ to, not if the citizens he supposedly “saved” all adore him as much as Holly. Adoration isn’t why he brought Holly home and sent food to starving families during a deadly winter (a winter which was _his_ fault to begin with). Good people don’t expect rewards. The notion of receiving recognition for _anything_ has breakfast threatening to crawl back up his throat.

“There’s no way he’s coming with us,” Beatrice states flatly, swiveling her neck to get the kinks out. Holly’s ears sag in disappointment; Wirt peeks from his covering, confused. At their reactions, Beatrice rolls her eyes. “He’s injured and weak as a lamb—I doubt he’d make it ten paces without fainting. _And_ he’s a filthy mess. Do you want Appleonia’s first impression of The Wanderer to be a filthy, sickly weakling?” 

“Hey,” bleats Wirt.

“Oh,” droops Holly. 

“Exactly,” affirms Beatrice. She points hard at Wirt, her stare narrow and appraising. Despite running herself ragged, despite wrestling The Beast as aggressively as one of her brothers, despite a night tossing and turning in a barn and starting the morning with tears, Beatrice is _far_ more put together than the scrawny boy sitting in the hay. Admiration for her tenacity and resilience hits Wirt as a sharp, sweet pang… and then she keeps talking. “He needs a proper bath. I can dress his wounds. We’ll see about presenting him to his fans afterward.”

Wirt yips, “A bath? Are you kidding?! You wouldn’t _hear_ of sleeping at the Inn—all of a sudden you’re making decisions about what’s best for _me?”_

“Not fun, is it dear heart?” Beatrice smirks at him. Challenging. “You know I’m right. You’ll heal faster if we clean you up first—and do _not_ tell me you’ll swim in a river. That’s what dogs do.”

“I wasn’t going to suggest that,” retorts Wirt, who was absolutely going to suggest that.

“Could you even _get_ to a river in your condition? Walking _or_ sugarcubing-in-tea or whatever?”

“...No. I don’t think so…”

“We have extra bath supplies at the Golden Delicious,” Holly pipes up, eager to help. “And there’s a water pump by the barn—as long as you don’t mind the water being a little cold, Wanderer.”

“He doesn’t,” Beatrice asserts. She takes the Dark Lantern from its seat in the corner and takes Holly companionably by the elbow, guiding the filly out of the stall without entertaining Wirt’s feeble gripes—unaware or uncaring of her own rumpled façade. Holly lights up in response to her inclusion and launches into chatter about soap and towels. The girls are two steps from where Beatrice and Wirt had slept when Wirt lurches from his nest to grab the hem of Beatrice’s skirt, a wheeze escaping him from the abrupt motion and the strain it exerts on his frame.

Beatrice peers at him in surprise. Wirt himself is taken aback, focused on the calico fabric bunched in his talons as if it jumped into his grip of its own free will. “S-Sorry,” he blabs, releasing her. “I…” _Don’t want you to go? Don’t want you to leave me?_ “...Have a nice time in town. That’s all.”

“I won’t be gone _that_ long,” Beatrice tells him. She sounds unusually gentle, though she coaches her mask into tough stoicness. Wirt wants to comb free the pieces of straw trapped in her tresses. “Sleep in some more, you useless teenage boy. And don’t _look_ at me like that—I’m done crying for today, got it?”

Wirt nods obediently and withdraws into the stall, settling into the hay like a loyal dog waiting for his master to return. Beatrice blows a derisive puff of air from the side of her mouth before pivoting away from him, Holly and the Lantern in tow. She stubbornly does not glance back.

Holly, however, waves goodbye to The Wanderer on her way from the barn… that sly and knowing smile balanced happily on her face.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Beatrice is thankful for Holly’s amiable babble as they exit the barn; they roll the door mostly shut behind them to give Wirt some privacy and further incentive to doze, and as their shoes step onto the orchard’s dirt path the Appleonian’s conversation powders Beatrice like sugar over a pastry. Overly sweet, perhaps… but Beatrice appreciates the sweetness. It is legitimate and wholesome, and the freckled young lady does her best to pay attention to her equine companion rather than the fragile squeamishness in her core.

“So, those turnovers? You have to use the coldest butter you can, to get the flaky crust just right. And you MUST use a sprinkling of sea salt on top before they’re fully baked, to offset the sweetness. And we always use at least two apple varieties in the filling—one tart and one sweet—for a depth of flavor profile.”

“Sea salt, huh? Good tip.”

Night’s mellow rain has smoothed the gauges of Beatrice’s previous footprints; the only tracks she notes are Holly’s coming from town, and these are gradually crossed by worker’s boots traveling along plots of purple-varnished Pearmains and green-marbled Malindas… none straying toward the barn. Orioles, thrushes, jays, and waxwings busy themselves on fruit-laden boughs. Clouds iced with lilac skud lazily across a clear sky, joined by the smoke of Appleonian chimneys. Beatrice would like to believe that this peacefulness correlates directly to the current state of The Beast… that the world feels safe because _he_ feels safe, and that The Beast feels safe because things really will improve between herself and Wirt.

She _wants_ to believe that. It helps to purge some of her guilt, the ugly ruminations that gnaw at her heels as she keeps in step with Holly.

“Would you like me to braid your hair?” Holly asks, shrugging her own thick loaf of a plait over one shoulder. “Unless you know how to braid your own hair, that is, my arms always fall asleep when I try to do mine…”

“Yeah. That’d be fine,” Beatrice responds mechanically. She had rushed through her bath yesterday and internally cringes when she can feel the dust on her skin, the hay knotted in her curls. It’s not that she gives a crap what other people think when they see her—she isn’t here to impress the Appleonians, as Holly is the only citizen she _slightly_ cares about—but damn, what she wouldn’t give to feel properly clean and pampered. 

Holly picks a speckled yellow apple from a passing branch with her free hand and idly shines it on her sleeve. “I’ve got a spare comb in my room. And a ribbon, too, to tie it all back. How d’you feel about blue? I think it’d really suit you, Beatrice!”

Speaking of _pampered…_ Beatrice tries to inspect the Dark Lantern as inconspicuously as she can, frowning at its sluggish bourbon flame. She’ll have to hike to that sinister forest Edelwood later to harvest more oil; The Beast’s injuries won’t heal otherwise, and he won’t survive on scraps—and she has no intention of starving him more than necessary. That would be cruel. 

Oh, god… is Beatrice ever going to come to terms with _that_ facet of her friend? The surviving-on-lost-souls part?

“What would you say The Wanderer’s size is in a pant? My grandfather or Papa will have a spare pair lying around, I bet…”

Would it be ridiculous to hope that Beatrice can devise a way to mitigate The Beast’s unholy hunger? Wirt has hopes and desires and needs beyond those contained behind metal and glass (she knows he does, he’s more than his Beastliness, she _knows_ it). Beatrice herself can’t deny how _right_ it feels to carry the Lantern. She’d snagged it before leaving as if it were a habit; only after she walked into the sunshine did Beatrice remember that she probably needed the Lantern to offset her tether-fever, as Wirt had suggested. 

“There’s a shirt with a collar wide enough to fit over those antlers in Papa’s closet _somewhere…_ ”

Wonder and bewilderment fold seamlessly together her mind, spiced by a dash of trepidation. Does the Dark Lantern feel “right” to her because she cares so much for Wirt, or because she belongs to The Beast? 

An ache pounds behind Beatrice’s eye sockets. She doesn’t want to think of her relationship with Wirt as “ownership,” despite how much their connection resembles a choke chain. Would becoming Lantern-Bearer bring more equality to their connection by placing The Beast in a vulnerable position? Should she think of herself as a warden, or a guardian… or a guard dog?

“Oh! And I have another dress for you as well! Not that your own clothes aren’t… um… I’m sure they _were_ very pretty, maybe with some mending… anyway there’s one that doesn’t fit me anymore that I think would look _darling_ on you...” 

What kind of awful friend considers friendship as a transaction of power, anyway?

They’re about halfway to town when a few orchard workhorses pushing wheelbarrows and hauling equipment impede them. The group is about twenty yards away, invested in their own lively conversation, and they don’t seem to notice the ladies approaching from the north. Or rather, they don’t notice until Holly raises her arm toward them and calls out loudly in greeting.

“Peter! Young Tim! Mr. Boulonnais! Good morning!”

The stallions prick their ears toward the pair and flare their nostrils suspiciously at Beatrice, who halts and clutches a startled Holly firmly by the arm. “Lantern,” Beatrice whispers, fingers tensing. Her heart trots faster when the Appleonian men trade glances with one another, as if deciding whether or not to go save the town darling from the lunatic might-be witch. “Holly, I’m still holding the Lantern. I ran past people’s homes last night shouting _Beast…_ ” 

“Good morning, Holly Hotchkiss!” neighs a sorrel with a white snip on his nose. The others echo his salute, not wanting to meander away should the filly need help. Their eyes slide to Beatrice and what she carries as if they might transform into snakes at any second. “Enjoying the weather with your… friend?” 

Beatrice is astonished that he didn’t simply ask “do you want to be rescued?” considering those unspoken words hang so weightily from his tone. Color burns her face.

“Oh yes, Young Tim,” Holly whinnies back, oblivious. “Are you grafting saplings today? We were on our way to do some errands…” At Beatrice’s warning squeeze, the horse-headed girl thankfully takes the hint and grins awkwardly, cutting the exchange short. “Lovely day, so lovely! Look at that sky! Anyway I’m going to show my new _friend”_ —she says the word so staunchly that Beatrice’s chest hurts—“some famous Appleonia cultivars, goodbyyye!”

The equine lass sweeps her “new friend” off the path and into the ankle-high grass. Beatrice senses three pairs of watchful eyes on her shoulders long after she and Holly are far enough that they’re definitely alone.

“What was I thinking?” Beatrice’s voice wants to quiver; she reinforces it with bitter anger, splinting her syllables with cold steel. “It’s bad enough that nobody in town will trust me after all the stupid stuff I did… but what about Wirt? What if I ruined everything for him here?”

Holly doesn’t appear to be listening. She prods Beatrice’s free hand with the apple she’d picked earlier until the agitated young woman takes it; Beatrice unconsciously squeezes the fruit to the point of bruising ere she realizes that she’s holding anything besides the Dark Lantern. “That right there is a Golden Confetti. It’s an Appleonia-exclusive cultivar, developed by my great-great-great grandmother. Try it!”

The apple’s sherbert-orange skin bears spots of vibrant yellow. Beatrice glares at it first and Holly second. “I hit your grandmother’s tree with an axe, trying to feed its oil to The Beast’s flame. I bolted through town hollering ‘Beast’ at the top of my lungs, told everybody where to _find him,_ shoved _you_ to the ground in front of an audience—”

“You can tell if it’s ripe based on the ratio of yellow to orange,” Holly explains with a bland smile, drawing Beatrice’s harsh stare toward the apple. “If it’s more golden on top, near the stem, it’s best for eating fresh. If it only has a few speckles, it’ll be better for cider.”

Beatrice throws the apple to the ground with so much force it bounces. “Damn it, Holly! Are you listening to me?! I don’t care about _stupid apples!”_

“I know,” Holly says quietly. Her expression is so soft with compassion that Beatrice’s anxiety is swaddled by it, subdued, and the thorns in her stomach become tears in her eyes. “Whenever I start to lose my head from worry, Mama makes me knead bread dough or skin apples until I can think clearly about what’s worryin’ me. I was trying to distract you, that’s all. Sorry.”

Beatrice’s own mother would make her go outside and beat rugs to get her frustration out. Audrey taught her how to embroider, so there’s a hoop under the bed crowded with swear words stitched in cursive. Her brothers tease her until she’s more pissed at their antics than whatever had been bothering her in the first place. And Holly had wanted her to focus on something that fit in the palm of her hand so she wasn’t swept away by the behemoth conglomeration of mistakes and regret looming over her head. 

“Oh,” the redhead croaks. “That’s a good idea.”

Holly retrieves the apple from where it rolled; her hand cups Beatrice’s to fold her fingers around the prettily colored fruit and lingers for a few seconds, transferring warmth. “One worry at a time,” the Appleonian instructs. “What’s the first one?”

A pit yawns where Beatrice’s lower ribs join her sternum. She gazes at the cheerful Golden Confetti as if it is a crystal ball, and lifts the Lantern to be level with it. “You figured out what this was,” Beatrice says, brittle as blown glass. “What if the rest of your town does, too? What if they don’t like The Beast’s Dark Lantern floating all over town? What if they connect ‘The Wanderer’ to The Beast, and they don’t like Wirt anymore either?”

“That was more than one worry,” Holly says wryly, “but that’s alright. I can assuage you: they wouldn’t mind the Lantern, because it’s _The Wanderer’s_ Lantern. Your outburst was… _alarming,_ but the townsfolk need a little spice in their lives sometimes. I don’t think you’ve done any damage to The Wanderer’s reputation.” 

That Beatrice has irreparably damaged her _own_ reputation is left hanging. She analyzes Holly’s face. “Do you really believe that everyone you know will be _peachy_ if they realize that The Wanderer IS The Beast? Or are we just assuming that _no one else_ will make that connection?” 

“I believe that it doesn’t matter,” Holly elaborates, “because it _doesn’t._ The lantern you’re holding belongs to The Wanderer, and whether that also means it belongs to The Beast has no relevance. We know _who_ he is. Nobody will care _what_ he is. Appleonians aren’t _daft,_ Beatrice—they know about the Edelwood, the bargain, the orchard. I’d be more surprised if people _didn’t_ suspect The Wanderer’s nature...”

The pit under Beatrice’s diaphragm contracts. “So… I didn’t ruin anything.”

“No, you didn’t ruin anything,” Holly confirms. “Let’s find another apple for you—that one is basically applesauce.” 

Holly’s radical acceptance—the whole town’s acceptance, in fact—leaves Beatrice humbled. She takes the next apple that Holly hands her (“An Arlet,” Holly informs her) and concentrates on shrinking her emotional maelstrom into the red-green striated thing in her grip.

Wirt is The Beast. Beatrice can never afford to forget this. His whims control the weather, and death gives him life. 

But he is also her friend. And Beatrice knows which one of these things should matter the most. 

“Next worry,” Holly prompts, bending down to bat at some tall ox-eye daisies blooming in the shade. 

Beatrice scrambles for the first thing that isn’t the metal object swaying at her thigh. “My family. They… uh… they _don’t_ think of Wirt so highly right now, and it’s not his fault. And they’re probably planning a funeral for me if they haven’t held one already…” And they might be in real danger, with that Edelwood grove planted upriver like a vulture overlooking a carcass. Are those thorns that Wirt grew still circling the homestead? Would he know if anything had happened to her family while she’d been gone? 

“That’s easily solved!” Holly says, chipper. She points to a bi-level brick building by the edge of town, visible past all the trees growing downhill, built with the orchard at its back and a main road into Appleonia at its front. “You want to head to the post office first, to write a letter to your loved ones? Thom Preakness can find any address, anywhere, fastest postman this side of the Reischauer River.”

Terror. Beatrice has wings and hollow bones, and everything is her fault, and she doesn’t know how to put her mistakes into words or how to explain herself to undo the chaos she left behind—she’s put her mom and dad and siblings through so much grief—she’s a terrible friend and daughter and person—

The Arlet apple is firm in her grip. She doesn’t have to write an essay; all she has to do is let her family know that they haven’t lost a daughter. Everything else will come when she brings Wirt home.

“Yeah,” Beatrice sighs, treating Holly to an authentic expression that’s almost a smile. “Let’s do that.”

They don’t bother veering back to the path; Holly skips down lanes and zig-zags around trees pointing out the varieties grown only in Appleonia and classics that Beatrice knows from going apple-picking with her siblings in the fall. Beatrice’s inner turmoil hasn’t disappeared completely… yet enough of it has boiled off that she’s left with an incrementally more manageable simmer, something she can watch and monitor without utterly erupting. 

The main complication that refuses to dissolve or evaporate is that of the Dark Lantern: its waning fire, its connection to her soul and The Beast’s. Everything else could be solved, and Beatrice nevertheless would be trapped contemplating whether her new role is freedom or burden. Holding an apple cannot distract her from the core of her anguish.

And it _unequivocally_ won’t distract Wirt from his. 

If the first Beast is not merely a nuisance, but an active threat, will Wirt be able to defeat him once and for all? 

Apple trees fuzz in Beatrice’s peripheral vision. She has to concentrate on measuring her narrow breaths—inhale through nose, exhale through mouth—to delay her panic. She’d abandoned Wirt and driven him away when he desperately needed her; she’d been so swept away in how her own life had been altered that she missed a larger menace. The sensation of near-deadly failure drops through her abdomen like her foot missing a stair in the dark. What if she messes up again? Lets him down again? What if next time Wirt is lost for good? All their problems spiraled back to that wicked selfish _son-of-a-bitch_ who refused to die!

Holly brings her another apple. “Bedan cider apple,” she announces proudly. Her picnic basket looks fuller than it did when they left the barn. “Are you feeling any better? Is this helping? Oh, I hope I’m not annoying you…”

“Not annoying. Helping,” Beatrice promises. Maybe she’ll try this trick with Wirt when he’s dithering: _name that plant, idiot. Grow me some flowers. Do a Beast trick._ She works to make her expression neutral instead of nauseous. “I’m worried… I’m _always_ worried about… I don’t know what to do with…”

“The Wanderer?” Holly’s attention and the corners of her grin whittle sharper.

“Exactly,” Beatrice blurts. “How did…?”

“It’s natural to worry about people we love.” Holly shrugs and inspects an apple that is so dark red it borders on violet. 

“I guess…” Beatrice feels woefully out of her depth when she thinks about oil-stained ravens and bloodthirsty covens… and she does _not_ appreciate how Holly glances back at her, effervescent, eyes crinkling up as if she has a delectable secret.

“So… you _do_ love him?” Holly asks.

Beatrice raises a critical eyebrow at her equine companion. “Uh, yes? Why else would I put up with that branch-headed—”

The implications of the word hit her as swiftly as a train. Beatrice drops the Dark Lantern in her shock and it rolls from her feet like an apple from a tree, flame sputtering, but not as much as _she_ sputters as she backtracks on what she said. 

“No—not like that. I don’t _‘love him’_ love him!” The redhead crouches to pick the lantern up; her fingers slip over the handle, spasm, drop it a second time, a third; she’s fumbling with it while Holly assesses her coolly, listening, and the filly’s astute silence has Beatrice seeing the same shade of red that she’s currently blushing. There’s no way that horse-headed girl can know what Beatrice has thought—what she’s _dreamed_ —in the privacy of her own skull. “I’ve known him for almost a _year,_ and most of that time we’ve been together—but NOT dating, just ‘together’ in a loose sense, traveling together and living together—”

“You live with him?”

“Yes—no! HE lives with _my_ family. We adopted him. Like a stray dog. He doesn’t even come in the house. We all see him as our weird, eldritch pet. A _pet._ I cannot emphasize that enough.”

Holly seems to be fighting laughter. Her voice trembles minutely, like the corners of her mouth. “You think he’s cute, then?”

Beatrice ultimately grabs the Lantern like a jar of pickles—swears when she burns her hand—and locks her grip on the handle so tightly that her knuckles turn white as pearl. She glares at Holly indignantly, incredulously, hot under her skin with anger. “I do _not,”_ seethes her emphatic reply, “think he’s _cute.”_

“You _did_ say you loved him,” Holly presses innocently, rolling her stare to the sun-splashed clouds. “That made me wonder…”

“I love my dog Rusty, too,” Beatrice quips acidly, “but I’m not about to kiss a _dog.”_

“You’ve thought about kissing him?”

“Shut. Up.”

Holly can’t help her giggles. She presents the apple she’d picked as a peace offering—and Beatrice smacks it out of her hand. Rather than browbeat the filly, Beatrice’s ire and glaringly transparent discomfort make Holly chuckle all the louder.

 _If she were Audrey, I’d pound her._ Beatrice glowers furiously… and halts herself, redirecting that fury elsewhere. Holly is a walking sunbeam of hospitality who doesn’t deserve Beatrice’s jumbled temper or the draining drama that’s caused it. Neither, she admits, does Wirt.

Beatrice’s jaw tenses. However complicated her feelings (or lack of feelings, shut up) are for Wirt, her thoughts concerning the monster he supplanted are straightforward as a spear: she _loathes_ that bastard. _He_ is why Wirt lost himself, why Greg was in danger, why Beatrice was ripped from her home to dodge perils in the woods. If she’s going to mistrust _anyone,_ if she’s going to pour her hatred and animosity toward any being in the Unknown, she’s throwing it all on the coward that hides behind animals and the face of her best friend.

A savage smirk carves itself into Beatrice’s face. She doesn’t have to kill _her_ Beast anymore… but the old Beast isn’t safe from her wrath.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Tame animals don’t care for The Beast, but feral barn cats are hardly tame. The small colony that calls the barn their territory takes interest in the snoozing boy blanketed in the (proudly mouse-free) hay, and their furry bodies lend warmth and comforting feline vibrations as they crowd around. 

A silver tabby queen claims the small of Wirt’s back—mindful of his injuries—and stretches luxuriously to allow her kittens to nurse; two orange males take up a station on either side of Wirt’s head like a pair of fluffy earmuffs; a tortoiseshell playfully paws at Wirt’s antlers, testing how much she can get away with; an old grey-and-white dabs her tongue around the edges of Wirt’s wounds, wanting to clean but repulsed by the oily flavor of his blood. More cats filter into the barn with their kills—a mouse here, a shew there, a sparrow, a sock someone lost—and lay these offerings outside the stall for their poor, pathetic Beast to consume once he wakes up. Truly, he needs all the help he can get to heal. 

Wirt sleeps through it all, unaware of the attention being so graciously bestowed upon him. His breathing deepens, picking up the feline rumble resonating through his lungs. He dreams…

Of Greg. Home, safe, with his dad and their mom. If time passes the same way here as it does there—and Wirt has no reason to believe that it doesn’t—then Greg should be getting ready for school to finish and summer break to begin. Wirt dreams that he’s in their backyard, Jason Funderbuker the frog in his lap and daffodils in his hand. Greg is talking animatedly about all his summer plans: going to the movies, playing in the park, telling campfire stories with Wirt in the tent they’ll set up on the patio. “I’ll show you all the shadow puppets I know,” Greg tells him. The grass is very green and the sky is very blue. “We can roast marshmallows, too! And you’ll catch fireflies with me this time, right Wirt?” Yes, right. They’ll catch fireflies together. Greg smiles at him (home, safe) and then Wirt sees their mother waving at them from the kitchen window, but she’s only waving at Greg, and Greg runs inside and leaves Wirt in the yard. He dreams…

Of Sara. Sitting on his bed with a tape player, lovely and confident and everything he’d fallen for. “I liked it,” she says, and Wirt knows what she’s talking about because his stomach dunks below the carpet and his heart soars at the same time. “Do you have any more poems, Wirt? Maybe some clarinet? Would you share them with me?” He hesitates, unable to speak or move. He dreams…

Of Beatrice. Solid, strong, complicated, brave as a bear and twice as fierce. In winter he could taste her despair like steam rising off a hot meal, he’d _wanted_ it, but now she glows with a bewildering array of _affection fear exasperation love_ which Wirt wants even more. Her presence is shelter, somewhere for him to run to… but it is also a challenge, and Wirt can never forget that her rage is powerful enough to put The Beast in his place. She sits on the other side of a violent river with the Dark Lantern at her knees. She touches the Lantern, and the river calms until it is smooth as glass, as smooth as her bare shoulder where her night dress slips down her arm. “Trust me?” she asks. The flame of her hair reflects the flame of his soul. Wirt reaches for her with claws tipped by frost. Their joined hands bridge the water. He dreams…

Of feathers dripping with clotted blood and viscous oil. Bones buried in the dirt and crushed by roots. A hunger given solid form, death draped in dried leaves and animal skins, searing eyes that devour Wirt completely and the eyes are _his_ eyes and he is a shell, a tree, entombed in bark—

He wakes.

The feral cats scatter at his strangled cry, their fur bristled and ears flat. They clamber up the hay bales stored in the barn’s corners and in the loft—and from their safe positions they warily regard The Beast, wondering what could have disturbed him when they’d done their best to soothe him. 

“Ah… _ugh…_ Bea…?”

The center of his irises dilates yellow as he searches for her in the dusty shadiness of the barn. Then his awareness catches up with his racing thoughts, and Wirt sinks into the straw with a sigh. He can sense Beatrice carrying his spirit toward town; she feels so near that it’s almost as if he’s at the mill again, sitting under the kitchen window while he listens to her bustle around with her mother and sisters. Contentment fills him like broth off the stovetop. That’s right… his plan had backfired, but in the end it sort of _worked:_ Beatrice won’t suffer any more fevers so long as a piece of him is close to her.

Wirt had dreaded that having the Dark Lantern within his grasp would prove to be a temptation too masterful to ignore. Instead, the shadow of his hunger has receded from the light that Beatrice casts, winter’s cold banished by a burning hearth.

“Sorry,” Wirt contritely tells the cats whose eyes gleam at him from the barn’s nooks. He rubs the sleep from his eyes and unhinges his jaw to yawn. “Guess I’m jumpy… heh.”

Ironically enough, Wirt thinks that _he_ benefits just as much from his friend’s company. Though she’d beaten him nearly senseless last night, as soon as Wirt had gotten everything off his chest he slept like a baby. It was like Beatrice was _supposed_ to be there. She smelled like home… or what “home” is to him now, since the home he’d grown up in was no longer his. Her heartbeat melded with the drum of the rain on the roof and set the rhythm of his own pulse like a steady metronome. The terror of her nightmare ripped _Wirt_ awake—and that should probably freak him out, that Beatrice’s _hot-desperate-disgust_ had been more vivid than his own formless watercolor dreams—but he’d been so relieved to see her _there_ and alive that he’d nodded off again.

“What am I going to do while Beatrice and Holly are gone? There has to be _something_ useful… I’m not about to sit around like a lonesome lump while they’re out running errands… having girl-time… bonding over the pastoral scenery and telling each other fascinating secrets… t-talking about me…”

The silver tabby queen’s litter launch themselves at the nervous Beast with tiny claws outstretched. Their mother purrs in approval at their hunting skills from her perch on a border of the stall; Wirt is too grateful for the adorable distraction to mind how vicious the kittens are in their play-biting, and fends for himself as well as he can with one arm. He doesn’t want to dwell on why his wounds are taking so long to heal. It’s not as if he can _die._ And because Beatrice possesses the Dark Lantern, Wirt doesn’t have to exhaust himself plotting or pretending anymore… he can _rest._

The realization stuns him. There’s nothing he has to do right this second, no emergency that’s screaming for his attention, no convoluted scheme to follow through. Wirt is in a barn, with five kittens trying to climb him like a scratching post, and Beatrice is with Holly and they’re pretty far from being “fine” but they’re not in immediate peril, either.

Wirt doesn’t dwell on this small victory for long. He’d hate to jinx it with too much hope.

“Okay—OKAY, that’s too rough!” He picks up a calico by the scruff; she swipes at him energetically and utters a fearsome hiss. “What would Greg have named you, I wonder? Probably something totally out of left field… like ‘Sassafras’ or ‘Cheeseburger.’ Is that your name, you little demon? Are you a little Burger?” 

Burger lets him squish her bubblegum-pink paw pads. While he’s distracted, a black sootball of a kitten leaps up to his shoulder to chew on his hair. The adult cats jump down from the loft and filter from their hiding places to repose in stripes of sun.

“You guys aren’t attracted to me because of the purring, right?” Wirt asks the kittens, scooping several of them up to rub their cheeks. (The black one is now Matilda; the pale cream tom is Buttons; the tabby twins are Helter and Skelter). If only animals had been so enamored with Wirt in his old life… he could’ve used the company, and there’s no denying how therapeutic it is to spend time with creatures who only judge him based on how comfortable he is to sleep on or his use as a toy. “No, of course you’re not… because I _don’t_ purr… Do I? No. No way. But… _do I,_ though?”

Please, god, let Beatrice have been teasing him about that.

Groaning, The Beast gently brushes the kittens off of him and attempts to stand—determined to accomplish at least one task before Beatrice returns. His friend had carried a vein of that _hot-desperate-disgust_ through breakfast, although she’d muzzled it reasonably well; if Wirt can show her that he’s alright, will the unease she’s hiding dwindle? 

Wirt has to support himself bodily on the closest side of the stall. He’s running on fumes—the _fumes_ of fumes—and sweat dapples his temples as his sore muscles draw taut as the string of a bow. His limbs tremble. His heart flutters, struggling to pump a diminished volume of blood that yet needs replacing. When he’s finally up, Wirt drapes his upper body over the stall and blows air like a stallion that’s just run a mile. What can he do that’s valuable, but won’t make him instantly black out? Think, think, think…

Flowers! Wirt can grow and gather flowers! A “thank you” bundle for Holly, and an apology bouquet for Beatrice—perfect! All he has to do is get outside, where the sunshine can nourish whichever blooms he wishes to coax forth…

“Yellow, peach, pink roses for Holly… hydrangea, sweetpea… hyacinth and blue violets for Beatrice…”

He mutters the list under his breath, shuffling along the rows of stalls in case his knees give out. The barn cats take turns to do-si-do about his hooves, chirping encouragement at him. The Beast has made it almost three whole stalls toward the exit when he reaches his claws up toward his chest, an unconscious gesture, to play with the necklace of teeth that’d become a habitual source of reassurance.

His claws scuff up his sternum and do not tangle. There is no sensation of ivory beads about his neck. 

A tidal wave of horror crushes the contents of Wirt’s ribcage. He falls to his knees, heaving instead of breathing, and darkness constricts his vision into a distant pinpoint.

 _It’s gone._ The ward that had protected him from the old Beast is gone.


	3. bath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whiggity was a massive help for this chapter! Thank you for the feedback ;)

Beatrice writes a letter informing her family that she is alive in a quaint town called Appleonia; that Greg has returned home safely; that Wirt is… himself, and no danger to her or anyone else. She promises that she’ll explain everything when they all see each other again, but does not promise to return home soon. Two apologies are crossed out, because Beatrice isn’t sorry for going after Wirt and knows that she’ll do it in the future if necessary. The Beast is _her_ priority. No one can do her job better than Beatrice can.

After the post office, Holly walks Beatrice through town. Of the equine folk that heard and witnessed Beatrice’s midnight madness (and there are a fair amount) none of them treat her with anything worse than mild suspicion or grumpy annoyance during their daily good-mornings. The citizens are more concerned with ensuring that Holly is okay—and when the cheerful filly shows no sign of distress, walking arm-in-arm with her friend, even the wariest Appleonians relax. Evidently, what’s good enough for their Miss Hotchkiss is good enough for them.

They pass a bakery with a line out the door, wafting the smell of fresh bread and vanilla; a wagon pulled by two mule-sized geese unloads vegetables taken straight from their field; someone plays guitar on a bench, strumming mellow notes into the crowd. Everywhere she turns her head, Beatrice sees flowers spilling over in planters outside shop windows and hung in baskets from the lamp posts—blushing begonias and electric-blue lobelias and buttercream petunias. Citizens are starting their errands or walking to work. Neighbors greet neighbors and shopkeepers wave at frequent customers. All is harmonious.

Beatrice ponders how many other places are thriving like Appleonia under the new Beast’s blessing… and if, perhaps, her own home had become one of those places without her realizing.

Instead of going to the Golden Delicious, Holly brings Beatrice to the Hotchkiss family homestead: an adorable yellow house with white trim and rose-red shutters to match a cheerful red door. Since the majority of the Hotchkisses are out working the orchard or helping at the inn, the girls trot upstairs unhindered to spend the rest of their morning gathering bath supplies and extra clothes and enjoying one another’s company. 

Holly finds a powder-blue dress she grew out of two years ago that fits Beatrice’s smaller human frame just fine. The dappled-brown filly—as an only child—is thrilled to play with Beatrice’s hair as they chat in Holly’s room.

“How many siblings did you say you had?”

“There’s ten of us.”

“Ten?!”

“Yep. A lot of work to do at a mill.”

“Lord… when the Morgans had twins, it’s all the whole town could talk about for weeks… do you want a family that big someday? Y’know… if you settle down with the right person…?” 

This dose of normalcy and reprieve has Beatrice torpidly dozing off, content as a cat with a belly full of cream… which makes the contrast between comfort and what she feels next hit all the sharper.

Beatrice knows that something is wrong before the Unknown tells her. It’s a tightness crawling under her skin, an urge to move with no direction, and after Holly finishes braiding her freshly combed hair into a crown she impatiently throws open the nearest window to feel the air. Violet-and-pink impatiens dripping from the window planters sway in a balmy morning breeze… and then that breeze shifts course. The twinge in Beatrice’s stomach is pulled along with it. She grabs the Dark Lantern off the floor of Holly’s bedroom—goosebumps pebble her arms—she runs out of the house with worry wrinkling her brow and no idea _why._

Only about two hours have passed since Beatrice left Wirt in the barn. How much trouble could he have gotten into while she was gone? What evidence does she have that he needs to see her, besides a weird twist in the wind?

“Wait! I wanted to add a ribbon!” Holly comes jogging after her through the back porch door with a blue silk bow. She quirks an ear at Beatrice standing blankly between two rows of Blushing Maiden cultivars and an overflowing vegetable garden, the lantern held aloft in front of her as though she wants it to point her somewhere. “Er… We don’t _have_ to put a ribbon in, if you don’t want…”

The trees rustle a restless susurration—acres of malcontent. Beatrice’s anxiety worms deeper. _Malcontent?_ Why would she interpret waving branches as warning throes? “It’s not the ribbon,” she tells Holly, who picks up on her suspense and flicks to attention. “Where’s that basket with the bath supplies? I’ll take it to Wirt now.”

“Anxious to get him cleaned up, huh?” Holly tries to joke. When Beatrice doesn’t laugh she goes to pluck a quartz-pink apple as a diversion. “You alright? I didn’t mean to bring up kissing again, I couldn’t help it! The Wanderer is going to love the dress on you, it brings out your—”

A blast of wind strips leaves off the tops of the trees and flattens grass, spinach, and rainbow chard. The girls’ skirts whip like flags. 

“Holly,” Beatrice pleads over the gust, laboriously adjusting her stance to stay on her feet. “I have to go.”

The filly retrieves their supplies: a basket of locally made soaps and oils, bandages, a comb, and a clean set of clothes borrowed from Mr. Hotchkiss’s closet. Beatrice grabs them like they’re priceless jewels. “I’ll stop by later for lunch?” Holly suggests, closely watching agitation itch the other girl’s features. “While you’re helping The Wanderer with his bath, I’ll fetch some more tinder for his, ah… you know.”

“That’d be great,” Beatrice tells her honestly, pacing into the thrashing orchard. “Sorry to dip out, Holly—it’s probably nothing—”

Holly waves at her. “I don’t mind! Go check on your boy!”

And the equine lass knows it _must_ be serious when Beatrice doesn’t snap back to correct her.

The pre-summer heat that had toasted Main Street all nice and golden is blown tumbling into the distant forest, whisking black walnut, hickory, and hackberry branches into a brisk-hissing frenzy. The sweat on Beatrice’s hairline dries cold. Flailing fabric pulls taut on her thighs and trips up every step and she’s too _slow,_ the barn is too _far,_ and the aroma of rain might be her imagination but her most recent memory of rain involves Wirt succumbing to evil and kidnapping his brother. There’s a natural climate, sure—but then there are the consequences of a Beast’s turbulent emotions.

Beatrice should know the difference.

She avoids a group of workers pruning a train of Fameuse, who whicker at her curiously yet are indifferent to the boom of wind rattling their ladders. Wouldn’t they be bothered if their Wanderer needed their aid? 

She looks for birds nesting in the apple trees, for a sign from the wildlife, but all the blackbirds and cardinals must be hunkered down to wait out the gales.

“I’m nuts, I’m _nuts_ …” This is no different from how she’d watched Wirt sleep last night: obsessive and absurd. Wirt is probably fine. Or as fine as can be expected, with his physical injuries and emotional trauma and the threat of his predecessor hanging over his head. He _will_ be fine—they _both_ will—once they’ve spent a few days lounging in the orchard and forgetting the world. Beatrice must be overreacting, attuned to the manufactured disasters her mind has to make up now that Wirt isn’t dangerous—

But the old Beast _lives,_ so she might not be overreacting, she might actually be sensitive to the terrible things that _Wirt_ can detect—

A pair of antlers bounds toward her from a cluster of scarlet-fruited Sandows. Beatrice’s pace falters when she recognizes Buck; the stag’s white tail is flipped up like a flag of surrender as it approaches, and although it halts beside her its jittery hooves mince the grass with urgency. It wants her attention. It wants her to follow.

If the twelve-point deer were merely spooked by a nearby predator, it wouldn’t have bothered to seek Beatrice out. Wirt is in trouble.

Beatrice swings herself, the basket, and the lantern onto Buck’s back; she scarcely manages to hang on when the stag leaps into a gallop. _Don’t let it be an Edelraven. Not an Edelraven, not an oil-monster, not a witch or a disillusioned Appleonian or that wackjob Woodsman...!_

Leaf-strewn flurries rip at the unbound curls framing her face and drag at her skirt. Clouds billow from the eastern horizon to blind the sun, casting half of the orchard in shadow. The weather is changing too rapidly to be a coincidence. At the first peek of the barn’s white fence, Beatrice slides off Buck’s back while the deer is mid-stride; she hits the grass running. 

Songbirds belt their warning songs in the woods behind the building—but what Beatrice _initially_ hears is the discord of furious feral cats. She hasn’t touched the barn door before a bellicose din of yowls explodes from the other side.

“Wirt? What the hell is—”

A behemoth grey cat missing one eye spits at her as she rolls open the entrance; a litter of kittens charges behind the scruffy tom and all fling themselves at her, hooking their puny razor claws into her dress. They’re treating her as an intruder. A threat. Where is Wirt?!

The Lantern-Bearer calls for him a second time and a choppy gust pummels the barn so hard that the structure creaks. Paired with the whistle of air slashing across the roof she hears a quavering whimper of “B...Beatrice?”

“I’m here, Wirt. Are you hiding? I— _whoa!”_

An onyx-gloved limb swipes at her from a pile of straw and hellishly growling barn cats. Wirt huddles in their hackle-raised midst on his side, eyes blazing yellow-white and sightless with panic. He’s trying to speak but his jaw chatters so vigorously the words get hacked into breathy pieces. “B-Beatrice, I… l-lost it, I _lost it,_ h-he’s going to—to find me—f-f-find me—”

Beatrice kneels to reach for him; the cats guarding The Beast hack at her with claws unsheathed and fangs bared in banshee howls. She would admire how tigerishly they protect Wirt if her hand weren’t bleeding. “Wirt, listen to me. You have to chill out. I want to help you, but— _ow,_ damn it—I can’t _do_ that if these demons won’t— _OW!_ —back off!”

Wirt sucks in truncated gasps of air. He fists his talons into the fabric draped around Beatrice’s crouching legs and yanks her toward him, a drowning man fighting to resurface, and his tearful jabber rushes faster as he tries to float his terror on a single exhale. The cats mirror his distress. Reverberate it. And the tempest winds outside _shriek._

“Enough!” 

Beatrice swears and slams the Dark Lantern on the ground. Every cat in the barn abruptly silences as if she fired a gun.

Even Wirt chokes off a waterlogged noise. He hugs Beatrice’s calves as though he’ll sink through the floor if he lets go and hides his face in her skirt. Beatrice notices that he’s hyperventilating into the pale blue calico; the speed of each blustery current shaving the shingles harmonizes with his exhales. “I lost it,” The Beast repeats in a salt-scraped voice. “The one th-thing that kept me _safe,_ and it’s… it’s gone. He’ll kn-know where I am. He’ll f-find me. Take me. Please, Beatrice, I… I don’t want to h-hurt you, I don’t, sorry, don’t be mad, I didn’t mean to… _don’t be mad_...”

What is he talking about? “Why would I be mad, Wirt? You’ve already apologized… c’mon. Get up. You’re upsetting your kitty cat friends… and me. ”

She holds the sides of his face, intending to center him. The Beast jolts at her gentle contact. His sulfurous irises lift to hers and overflow. “I’m scared,” he keens, and the instant Beatrice gathers him into a hug he breaks down sobbing.

“Breathe,” the Lantern-Bearer commands. “I’m right here. We’re in Appleonia. We’re safe.” The exact line he’d used on her this morning. “Who will find you? The Woodsman? What did you lose?” Wirt’s sharp-tipped fingers clutch her back at the question and he grinds a wretched groan against the side of her neck. Sighing, Beatrice strokes his hair and excavates her vanishing reserves of patience. “I want to help you, Wirt, but you’re making this kinda hard…”

The young Beast shudders in her arms. His reply is muffled into her shoulder, so Beatrice has to grab one of his antlers and steer him to meet her gaze. “A… w-wa-ward,” he whispers. “A boon. P-Protection against h- _him._ The first Beast. I had it at the c-cabin, but I don’t have it anymore, don’t kn-know where it is, and… I’m such an idiot. Don’t know what he’ll m-make me, make me do. He’ll find me. I need it.”

“Can this ‘ward’ protect you better than I can?” Beatrice demands. She draws away to glower at Wirt face to face. When he opens his wobbling mouth to protest, she grabs both his antlers near their base and forces him to look at her. 

“It had _magic,”_ Wirt pules.

“I have _fists,”_ Beatrice interjects. “Have I not proven—repeatedly—that I can handle you at your worst? Not that I think that petty undead bastard is even _close_ to being able to reach you here, much less _find_ you. You know what I think?” she asks suddenly. “I think that old bastard isn’t as spooky all-knowing as you think he is.”

That stifles Wirt’s sob into a squeak. “R… Really?”

“Yeah,” Beatrice answers, her thoughts turning as she speaks. “If he’s so _omniscient,_ why didn’t he come after me when I was alone with the lantern? It’s not like I carry around an axe like the Woodsman. I could’ve been attacked by a bunch of oil-monsters on my way from the cabin to here—the horse-heads think the woods are infested with ‘em.”

“He’s weak,” Wirt mutters, remembering something. “He c-can’t… make his puppets last. They fall apart. They fall apart…” He closes his eyes, palms sliding up to his temples as if to block out a maddening sound or to reassure himself that he hasn’t been ripped out of his own skin. 

“So what if that soul-eating psychopath is searching for you,” Beatrice insists. “He must have no idea where you actually are. The oil-monster sightings could be him scouting out all these nearby towns like a stalker ex-boyfriend hoping you’ll show up. Otherwise, why didn’t he strike as soon as you came to Appleonia? Or when we were alone in the barn? Seems like a bad opportunity to waste, right?”

“Maybe he’s hoping for Greg,” Wirt growls darkly, eyes fracturing into azure and orange rings.

“Maybe,” Beatrice agrees, “but Greg isn’t even _here._ Because you were a good brother, and you sent him back home.”

“I did…” Wirt is calming down in increments. He nods a tiny nod, and Beatrice releases his antlers. 

“We’ll lay low,” she assuages him. “You’ll stay in the barn, or do your tea thing until we find your protection ward-thingy. Holly and I will take care of the lantern. And if we see any of those ugly birds, we’ll run right back to town… or I’ll kick their asses. I’ve done it before.”

“What if it’s not birds?” Wirt asks ominously.

Beatrice grins at him. “Then _you_ kick their asses.”

This makes Wirt smile. He awards her amazing speech with a soupy chuckle… but then frowns, scratching the back of his head. “You’re… better at this than I am.”

“Yes,” Beatrice readily agrees, settling back on her heels. “But, uh, what do you mean by ‘this’?”

“Being there,” says Wirt honestly. His cheeks and ears flush the hue of the impatiens outside Holly’s window; he wipes his palm from his scalp to his face in order to hide behind it. “You’re better at grounding, comforting. Having your shit together. Getting _my_ shit together. H… How do you do it?”

Beatrice is gobsmacked upon hearing Wirt say “shit” for perhaps the first time in his virginal life. He detects her astonishment and blushes more vividly. “What? It’s true… _I’m_ the one who should be reliable. You bring me back to myself when I’m losing my mind, and I can’t even dry your tears when y- _you’re_ crying… that’s unacceptable!”

“My job is to look after you,” Beatrice drawls matter-of-factly, tapping the Dark Lantern. She awaits the sting of that statement, a rankle of cynicism, but it doesn’t land. It’s as if owning her position in Wirt’s orbit has altered the connotations of that gravity.

Wirt pounds a fist on his knee. “And it’s _my_ job to look after _you!_ We’re—we’re—we’re collaborators! A team! If all I do is take from you… if I never give anything back, then I’ll forever exist a selfish parasite and worthless bro… partner.” He gulps, rubbing a frustrated mist from his eyes. “I don’t want to be your burden. I don’t want us always… struggling to figure out how we fit.”

Now Beatrice blushes, averting her stare toward the barn door. He might as well have peeped into her skull and read her thoughts. “What are you blabbering about, Beast?”

“I want to be as strong as you are,” he admits quietly. “Then maybe I’d stop being afraid of everything.”

A calico kitten with her face evenly divided half-orange and half-black toddles into Wirt’s lap and squalls at him pompously, as if scolding him for his melancholy. She’s joined by her siblings, who shamelessly vy for The Beast’s attention by patting him with their paws and rubbing their furry cheeks on his smooth-thorned knuckles. He’s distracted by their adorable pandering until Beatrice covers one of his hands with hers and examines him gravely.

“Do you trust me?” she asks. 

His reply is immediate and emphatic. “Yes.”

“Good,” Beatrice states, nodding decisively. “Then let’s give you a bath.”

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

A wide cider barrel stained faintly with the smell of fermented Braeburns serves as a bathtub: broad enough for Wirt to squat without knocking his knees into the sides and the perfect height for him to rest his arms on. He volunteers to gather his own bath water, but Beatrice isn’t blind to how he quakes like a foal when he tries to stand for more than four seconds; she orders him to play with the kittens while she fills bucket after bucket from a pump out front, supervised by Buck cropping grass by the fence.

She trundles the barn door shut behind her when she’s done. The Beast is a jungle gym of cats. 

“Will you go meet up with Holly while I’m… bathing?” Wirt mumbles the last word as if it’s vulgar. He glances at the barrel waiting in the center of the barn while dangling a piece of straw for the kittens.

Beatrice wipes her brow after pouring in the last pail of bathwater. “Lift one of those cats over your head, will you?”

“Huh?” 

“The calico one. Try her.”

Wirt, stumped, holds a jubilant pot-bellied kitten in one hand as if she were a baked potato. As he attempts to lift her up, he jerks in a quick gasp of pain and stops with his arm not quite shoulder-height. “I’m s-sore,” he explains, as if Beatrice didn’t already know.

“Use your other arm,” she instructs, leaning her hip into the barrel. 

“...The one I almost lost to an _axe?”_ Wirt huffs. He leers at the craggy black scab atop his shoulder and shakes his head, lowering the calico back into his lap—where she pins one of her siblings against Wirt’s bare stomach. “I can maybe lift that arm… here.” He demonstrates by having his forearm hover at the level of his lowest ribs. “I dunno how I managed to do _anything_ after the… after the cabin. And the other night.” An uncomfortable pall pales his complexion. “I think all the soreness is catching up to me.”

Beatrice nods, understanding. “I figured. No worries, though—I’ll help you.”

“Help me what?” Wirt asks, uncomprehending.

“Bathe, dummy. You’re not going to be able to reach much in the shape you’re in.”

“Oh,” says Wirt. He strokes the calico kitten and her inky sibling. Frowns. Flushes the exact color of a Brandywine tomato and pivots to Beatrice in disbelief, his expressive eyes lamps of sunset pink. _“Excuse me?”_

“I have six brothers,” Beatrice attests, intractable. Her countenance is businesslike, flat, but if Wirt doesn’t calm down then her cheeks are going to be just as stupidly red. “You don’t have anything I haven’t seen, multiple times… except the hooves, I guess.”

“Well _I_ only grew up with one brother, and it was bad enough stopping _him_ from surprising me in the bathroom,” Wirt complains. “I’ll just dunk myself in the water a few times and be done with it.”

“That’s not going to get all the filth off you _or_ properly clean your wounds,” Beatrice argues, teeth grinding. “Look—you’re already halfway naked. Just drop your trousers and quit being such a wuss!” Wirt continues to hesitate, gawking at her in shock and indignation, and the redhead flings her hands up. “I’m not going to _ogle_ you, weirdo. This is not one of your steamy bodice-heaving romances. It’ll be the same as scrubbing Rusty down after he rolls in mud—except _Rusty_ knows when to _shut up_ and _get in the damn tub!”_

“Stop comparing me to a dog!”

“Stop making everything so freaking awkward!”

Wirt growls—vexed—and sends his kitten fanclub peeling into the hay bales. His blush spreads down his neck and over his bruised chest. “Fine. Fine! I’ll take a bath! I’ll let you scrub me down like a dog! Make me clean and civilized again! I don’t care and I’m NOT embarrassed at all!”

Beatrice sweeps into an exaggerated bow and steps away from the cider-barrel tub as if making way for a king to sit on his royal throne. “Right this way, Your Antlerness.”

He totters to his hooves, wobbling as if he’s the one who had to navigate the orchard during gale-force winds. Beatrice does not assist him; she surmises that the poor boy won’t welcome more help that he doesn’t explicitly request.

Polite, the Lantern-Bearer turns around to let Wirt shimmy out of his pants as best as he can. She listens for a cue to intervene, yet The Beast doggedly steps from his slacks and slumps into the tub after a handful of strenuous minutes, sloshing a bucket’s worth of water into the barn floor. His breath saws in and out of his lungs. He swallows like he’s horking down a full-sized apple.

“I’m… um… I’m in. I’m r-ready. Please don’t look too closely at me—”

Frantic syllables crash into a wall. Wirt must’ve peeked at his friend dispassionately shedding the dress that Holly had let her borrow in favor of standing in her linen chemise, stockings, and petticoat—as if parading in her undergarments is what she does every day. 

“Didn’t want to ruin the outfit Holly lent me,” Beatrice clarifies, daring herself to look frankly in Wirt’s mortified face. She’s darted around the house in this same state of undress and thought nothing of it… there’s no reason why she can’t be as casual around her Beast-brother-pet. His nudity isn’t a big deal and neither are her drawers. “I’m being practical.”

“You couldn’t have warned me?” Wirt shrills. He shuffles his hands in front of himself like a screen; as Beatrice had predicted, he’s able to crouch in the barrel with plenty of room to twirl—which he does promptly to offer her belated privacy. He is _such_ a puppy. “Sorry—I wasn’t trying to stare—”

Beatrice rolls her eyes at Wirt's scandalization and rifles through her basket of bath supplies to re-collect her frazzled nerves. She chooses a block of all-purpose oatmeal-colored soap purportedly made by Holly’s mother; it smells of Bergamot and lemon. “What was that about ‘looking closely,’ Wirt?”

“I wasn’t… I didn’t intend to… not that you aren’t…” He ducks to hide his shame in the barrel but his antlers stop him from submerging. “Ouch! Sorry, my bad, I didn’t peep on purpose— _h-hey,_ Beatrice!”

She dumps cold water over his head to saturate his hair. Wirt hugs himself, shrinking inward, and his best friend ignores all of that to break off a piece of soap to thrust into his claws. “Too cold, Beast?” He shakes his head. Of course not—Wirt trudges in snow as if it’s bread flour; _cold_ doesn’t feel the same to him. “Sit up a little. Wash your arms. I’ve got your head.”

He balks, seconds from imploding. It’s a wonder he doesn’t boil his own bathwater with the heat of his humiliation. Then, charily, The Beast shows Beatrice his back and rubs his mini soap-chunk across the bark armor of his knuckles and forearms with the mechanical rigidity of a wind-up toy.

Beatrice commences shampooing with stiffly impersonal efficiency, fingers tangling in thick, overgrown hair that definitely needs shorn. Mats and clumps conceal cuts and sore spots. Certain areas of his scalp cause Wirt to flinch when her fingertips circle over; Beatrice recalls his cranium bouncing off the barn floor when she tackled him last night (her hands choking him in the woods, her fists hitting him while he begged her to listen, countless hurts and abuses) and bile burns her gut. Which of the plum-and-chartreuse contusions smudging his flesh are the ones that _she_ painted? How much more perverse is it to _help_ Wirt in this state of abject vulnerability when _she harmed him_ so severely?

From this vantage point, it is difficult _not_ to fixate on Wirt’s marbled blue-black blemishes, the interwoven rivulets of his veins carrying anointed blood to and from the blistered mountains of his injuries… and other features. Things she hasn’t had the leisure to study until this moment. 

As a human boy, Wirt had been a slight fellow, and Beatrice knew even as a bluebird that she’d be taller than him in her girl-form. But she would not call The Beast “slight.” He is thin like a whip-cord, like a vine tearing its way up a tree, all sinew and roots where his body has stretched to accommodate his myriad transformations. The angles of his shoulders and jaw are harsher now, sculpted in a way that surpasses “scrawny” and suggests something ethereal, predatory. Sometimes his voice cascades in timbres spun of silk and honey—The Beast’s hunting lilt—and it’s apparent that were he not beaten to hell he’s designed to ambush with that exact liquid grace. Not simply a _boy_ anymore, but the nascent etchings of a young man. He’s not _not_ handsome. And this intrusive admission spurs a springtrap of disgusted remorse. 

What is she _doing,_ letting herself consider Wirt like… that? He’s trusting her to handle him with dignity and Beatrice is in a slip in a barn kicking out snippets of her salacious fatuous fantasy-dream—

Wirt peers back at her over his scabbed shoulder, forehead pinched and pupils coral-hued. “What is it?”

“What is what?” Beatrice hadn’t thought she’d said anything out loud, or changed her scrubbing rhythm… but The Beast is gazing at her as if the riptide of her thoughts had tugged at him. She pushes at an antler to turn his face away from her under the pretense of scouring dirt behind his ear and doesn’t marvel at the knurled peaks of his spinal ridges whatsoever. (They’re polished like river stones, like the elegantly grooved veneer of his antlers.) “Did you hear a mouse or something?”

Please, don’t let him have heard her thoughts. Beatrice can’t stomach the notion of Wirt reading each gross thing that happens in her head… she has to put up a strong, composed front, she doesn’t need him absorbing her pessimistic second-guesses and hormonal teenage desire-angst or the fears she shares about their undead enemy. _Drop it,_ she thinks, imagining her inner dialogue as a physical shove to deter The Beast. _None of your business, drop it, drop it…_

Wirt’s tone is conscientious. “You seem… preoccupied.”

“That’s ‘cause you’re extra grimy. Seriously—were you gardening while I was out with Holly? It’s like the more I scrub, the more dirt I find!”

“I _do_ live outside,” Wirt quips haughtily. He starts to turn a second time and Beatrice grasps the same antler to hold him still. “You’re sure there’s nothing on your mind?”

Damn his sensitivity. “Quit wiggling.”

He sighs and lathers bubbles over his abdomen, sulking. “You can unload your thoughts on me, too, Beatrice. I can handle it. Maybe you’ll even feel better once you talk.”

“This is _bath time,_ not ‘gab about our feelings like a couple of housewives’ time…”

Beatrice pauses. Her fingertips creep up the outer spikes of Wirt’s antler, and he reflexively swivels toward the sensation as if that will allow him to see what she’s doing. “Now what, Miss Reticent?”

“Hmm… you’ve got leaf-buds, kiddo.”

They cannot be anything else. A dozen or so of the ovular growths are starting to split, revealing tender centers of dark green and smoky violet that resemble the foliage on a copper beech or purple crab apple tree; as she inspects them, Beatrice can’t help but wonder if the leaves will be glossy and oaken-shaped like those that rustle on the proud orchard Edelwood… or if they will be the sickly, papery things that cling to other Edelwoods she’s seen.

If love and sacrifice had made the orchard Edelwood into what it is, then… could The Beast be similarly affected? Could drawing him from the lure of despair change him, too? Have the signs of that change manifested as blossoms and leaf-buds, or are those purely flukes—the unpredictable byproducts of a human stealing the Forest Lord’s throne?

Beatrice clears her throat, unnerved at the possibility of her influence on her friend. “They’re… pretty,” she says awkwardly, withdrawing her hand. Wirt’s ears pinken. “Better than those girly blossoms, at least.”

“Girly blossoms?” Wirt echoes tartly, jeering down his long nose. “I’ll try to grow _manlier_ flowers next time, my mistake.”

“I’m _kidding_ Wirt. Your antlers are very… nice. They look good on you.”

The pink in his ears ripens, and when Beatrice kneads soap-suds into his scalp, Wirt shyly reaches up to tap wonderingly at a cluster of leaf-buds himself.

“You…” He clears a high crack from his throat. “You l-like them?” 

It’s good that Wirt is facing away from her, so that he doesn’t witness the color that blotches Beatrice’s cheeks—a shade lighter than the hue glowing from Wirt’s nape. She rakes her fingernails a little harsher than necessary through his tangled locks, avoiding the sorest patches. “Sure,” she grunts eventually. 

Wirt’s blush does not fade. Beatrice has to tap him on the back of the head when his pleased schoolgirl squirming interferes with her combing out a stubborn knot matted up by his branch-crown.

A lemon-perfumed lull froths up around them while they work. Beatrice rinses Wirt’s hair without warning, and Wirt spits out water and smears soap across his chest. Cats sashay by to oversee the process. Iridescent bubbles pile into the tub like snowy algae on a pond. It’s strangely satisfying, helping The Beast cleanse layers of soil and dried blood and oil when Beatrice _isn’t_ ruminating on her failure… Wirt unwinds further when she transitions from the top of his head to his lazily melting shoulders, and rests his chin on his crossed arms upon the edge of the barrel. His eyelids drop; the ghost of a purr paces in his ribs. 

“Say, Beatrice…” Wirt shifts to let his Lantern-Bearer methodically massage around his shoulder cicatrix; its banks crumble like river clay to unveil satiny lilac scar tissue, all tender and healed. “What about the, er... claws? And the… the h-hooves? Do you...” He picks at a knot in the barrel’s panels. Rubs his elbows self-consciously, talons tracing the border of jet patina and skin and spiderwebbed vessels. “D’you like those, too?”

_You think he’s cute, then?_

“No!” 

Beatrice slaps down the sponge she’d been using and splashes a wave of suds over the front of her slip. Wirt cowers at her conniption and _thunks_ his antlers retreating into the bath. “Never mind! Forget I asked! I’m just being dumb… I thought that…” He plunges his arms beneath the bubbles. “Forget it—”

“The hoove and claws suit you too, _damn_ it,” Beatrice snarls, dabbing at her chemise with a towel. She doesn’t look at Wirt and she is not ruffled. “Why should you care about my opinion, anyway? It’s not like I’m that girl Sara—”

Her vocal cords clip shut with her eyes. No, she didn’t. She didn’t say that. She’s not jealous enough, shallow enough, to bring up a crush that Wirt used to pine over—that he _still_ plausibly pines over—as a knee-jerk response to shield herself—

“You remember her?”

Wirt confronts Beatrice over the curb of the tub; his expression is one of being rammed into the deep end before taking an adequate breath, shaken and raw. Beatrice braces herself for the fallout of her hideousness—for Wirt to say that this is it, the last hurt and insult he can bear, because as much as he wants to be there for _her_ she is the kind of girl who shoots stones at bluebirds and Beasts without mercy. What she’s said is as tactless and vile as insulting a dead loved one, because for Wirt that old life _is_ dead, one he killed with the lantern’s flame, and she’s going to _puke…_

“We… we only talked about Sara like, one time,” Wirt resumes. He sounds very tired and very sad. Beatrice’s gaze has descended to the barrel’s planks, to pearls of soap glimmering on Wirt’s claws, too disgraced to raise any higher than the dip in his throat. “I didn’t think you cared about frivolous high school drama and… and lofty, silly infatuations that weren’t going anywhere, anyway. You were right: I was a real loser back home.” 

“Why, because of that Jason asshole?” Her chest is tight as a snare drum, surface tension primed to pop. She hears a sniffle and glances at Wirt, expecting tears…

He’s _snickering._

Beatrice watches him wipe the corner of his eye and… smile? “Man, I hated that guy,” he says, all sentimental and soft. “I haven’t thought about him in forever. He’d probably despair at how tall and cool I am now...” The light of Wirt’s eyes hasn’t soured into the sulfurous hues that betray his anxiety; the ache of his expression seems more like nostalgia than pain. “You remember _Jason Funderberker?_ My archnemesis? That figures… he was always pretty popular with the ladies… I bet he and Sara are together by now. Which I’m fine with, obviously—it’d be unforgivably creepy if I expected her to still be thinking about me after all this time has passed. I never earned her interest.” His smile teeters despite his effort to keep it. “Never earned your interest, either. Sorry… I basically hijacked your life and made you miserable, I shouldn’t ramble about junk that doesn’t matter—”

“Tell me about her,” Beatrice interrupts, trained on the gleam of citrus-scented froth that glides from Wirt’s right ear down the side of his neck and over his chiseled collar bone. His throat bobs; he’s speechless at her request. “We haven’t talked about your old life… and we should. You know about _my_ family, but you haven’t mentioned yours, or told me any stories about stuff you remember. What you miss. Who you used to be. All the shenanigans you and Greg got up to without me there to bail you out.”

Wirt recoils. “You… you aren’t missing much. You don’t want to hear about—”

“I do.” She does. 

Wirt stares at her for a long time. “Y...You’re sure? My life was seriously not that interesting...”

“I’m sure.” When _she_ smiles at _him,_ Wirt’s breath audibly catches. “Why don’t you start by explaining this whole ‘high school’ nonsense again? It sounds like the worst.”

Wirt moans theatrically, though the sound flutes with a quiver of unshed tears. “Oh my god. It is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year! Goodbye 2020! Thank you for all your support! Hope everyone has a fresh start and is able to find something to look forward to.
> 
> (°◡°♡).:｡

**Author's Note:**

> Tomorrow (10/14/20) is the official **ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THIS SERIES!** A year ago on Wednesday I published this Beast Wirt fic with absolutely no expectations and no goal except to have fun writing something for myself. I could not have predicted the support this angst train would gather. Thank you to each and every person who left a kudos or a comment, or who simply clicked on one of the installments because they were curious.
> 
> A few people have asked me "are we there yet?" in terms of reaching POTU's end. Once this part (and part 22) are finished, I can say with confidence that at least the first arc of the series will be "over." If graduate school doesn't destroy me first, maybe we'll be around the bend of the second story arc this time next year!


End file.
